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Monday, August 15, 2011

Syria’s Torment Can Become Region’s Agony

Excessive use of force against the people may lead to a structural collapse with terrible consequences

By Tanvir Ahmad Khan

The withdrawal of some key Arab ambassadors from Damascus and the sharp reaction by the spokesperson of the Syrian government, the redoubtable Buthaina Shaaban, to friendly advice from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and other Arab-Muslim states is a moment of great sadness. It may also be the tipping point in the five-month-old struggle in Syria as it makes it easier for the United States to end its relative restraint and call for President Bashar Al Assad to step down and thus make the calculus even more complex.

The strategic location of Syria, its crucial role in the Arab-Israel contention, its friendly ties with Iran and its links with Hezbollah all decree that the country should not lapse into either a civil war or a denouement of uncertainty in which the regime perishes, leaving a huge void behind. For this reason, even the US-led West that has no love lost for the Baathist regime allied to Iran has resisted calls for more explicit intervention. The United States has imposed some sanctions but its advice to Europe to extend them into the oil and gas sector has not been immediately taken. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has renewed this demand and also asked India and China to leverage their investments in Syria to put pressure on the regime. Turkey, a major trading partner and an ‘engage' state in dealing with Israel, is still weighing the pros and cons of abandoning the Damascus regime. The growing alienation of member states of the Arab League could have implications that Al Assad has not carefully calculated. If the Syrian conflict is a mixture of long-standing internal tensions and the new dynamics emerging from a kinetic western bid to establish a grip on the changing Arab world, the outside forces would be better placed to exploit the Syrian uprising to their advantage at Arab expense.

We have known since the Peloponnesian wars that misperceptions play an important role in igniting, fuelling and prolonging the flames of conflict. The sustained American hostility to Syria would have created a psychosis of fear in Damascus, especially after the western intervention in Libya, that Syria was just another domino that Washington wanted to fall. The national security state that the powerful Alawite leaders of the Syrian Baath party have maintained for three decades has obviously assumed that behind the protests of the civil society and intelligentsia lurks the threat of ‘extremist Sunnis' who have bitter memories of the regime. Libya, the regime reckons, demonstrated that the West has no hesitation to use Islamists instrumentally in pursuing a strategic objective like eliminating Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

Syria's own spring of a thousand blossoms ushered in by the accession of Al Assad to power has already ended in a melancholy autumn. If the West had backed the Arab plan for the settlement of the Palestinian question and persuaded Israel to trade off the occupied Golan Heights for peace, the hardliners around Al Assad would not have snuffed out the free debates of 2000.

Escalation

Damascus has also been an evident victim of miscalculation. It has continued to believe that it can get away with the use of force as it did in Hama in 1982. In the dramatic events in the Arab world since January 2011, it has become increasingly clear that the future dispensations would have to be more inclusive and that a modus vivendi with the Muslim Brotherhood and its moderate offshoots would have to be found. The Syrian regime keeps talking of ‘Salafist' insurgents, but in actual practice it has come down on Sunni protesters of much lighter shade for demanding reforms visualised in 2000-2001.

Fortunately for Syria and the entire Muslim world, the issues in Syria are still not framed in sectarian terms. The Syrian regime has inexorably climbed the ladder of escalation because it has not explored enough alternatives to violence. This quest for peace would become increasingly difficult as the movement in Syria gets fixated on an uncompromising demand for the family to step down.

Syria's torment can easily become an agony for the entire region if excessive and frequent use of lethal force leads to the unintended consequence of a structural collapse that also adversely impacts the business elite of the capital and Aleppo. Strategically, it could weaken the Arab front seeking honourable negotiations with Israel. Hezbollah needs a cooperative regime in Damascus if it is to retain its deterrent value for Lebanon.

Turkey would have renewed worries about the Kurds and its present open and beneficial relationship with Syria may come under strain. The Arab world needs consolidation, not more turmoil as the revolutionary phase of the Arab uprising is already over. Syria should become part of the new compact and an engine of a fresh synthesis in Arab politics.

-This commentary was published in The GULF NEWS on 15/08/2011
-Tanvir Ahmad Khan is a former ambassador and foreign secretary of Pakistan

About Me

I graduated from the French University in Beirut (St Joseph) specialising in Political and Economic Sciences. I started my working life in 1973 as a reporter and journalist for the pan-Arab magazine “Al-Hawadess” in Lebanon later becoming its Washington, D.C. correspondent. I subsequently moved to London in 1979 joining “Al-Majallah” magazine as its Deputy Managing Editor. In 1984 joined “Assayad” magazine in London initially as its Managing Editor and later as Editor-in-Chief. Following this, in 1990 I joined “Al-Wasat” magazine (part of the Dar-Al-Hayat Group) in London as a Managing Editor. In 2011 I became the Editor-In-Chief of Miraat el-Khaleej (Gulf Mirror). In July 2012 I became the Chairman of The Board of Asswak Al-Arab Publishing Ltd in UK and the Editor In Chief of its first Publication "Asswak Al-Arab" Magazine (Arab Markets Magazine) (www.asswak-alarab.com).

I have already authored five books. The first “The Tears of the Horizon” is a love story. The second “The Winter of Discontent in The Gulf” (1991) focuses on the first Gulf war sparked by Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. His third book is entitled “Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: From Balfour Promise to Bush Declaration: The Complications and the Road to a Lasting Peace” (March 2008). The fourth book is titled “How Iran Plans to Fight America and Dominate the Middle East” (October 2008) And the fifth and the most recent is titled "JIHAD'S NEW HEARTLANDS: Why The West Has Failed To Contain Islamic Fundamentalism" (May 2011).

Furthermore, I wrote the memoirs of national security advisor to US President Ronald Reagan, Mr Robert McFarlane, serializing them in “Al-Wasat” magazine over 14 episodes in 1992.

Over the years, I have interviewed and met several world leaders such as American President Bill Clinton, British Prime Minister Margaret Thacher, Late King Hassan II of Morocco, Late King Hussein of Jordan,Tunisian President Zein El-Abedine Bin Ali, Lybian Leader Moammar Al-Quadhafi,President Amine Gemayel of Lebanon,late Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, Late Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat, Haitian President Jean Claude Duvalier, Late United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan,Algerian President Shazli Bin Jdid, Jamaican Prime Minister Edward Siyagha and more...